Alexander Crummell

“ The night, I am convinced—the night of forlornness, of agony and desolation—is far spent, the day is at hand! The black charter of crime and infamy and blood, which for nigh three centuries, has given up my father-land to the spoiler, is about to be erased! The malignant lie, which would deliver up an entire race, the many millions of a vast continent, to rapine and barbarism and benightedness, is now to be blotted out! ”

“ There is something exceedingly sorrowful in this funereal procession of the weak portions of mankind, before the advancing progress of civilization and enlightenment! But amid all these sad general facts there seems to be one exception—the Negro! The ravages of the slave trade would seem sufficient to produce extermination: the mid-passage alone is enough to destroy any people! It has not destroyed the vitality of the Negro! The vast interior of Africa teems with the countless millions of an unnumbered population ”

“ If an English Christian grieves at the remembrance of wrongs inflicted upon Africa;—if his deepest sensibilities are affected at the darkness and the sin which still prevails through all her borders;—if he anxiously desires the spread of the Gospel through all her quarters;—if he wishes to see her sons, in every part of the earth, stand up erect, blessed with the liberty wherewith the Gospel makes men free; then, I say, that by participating in the labors, and sharing the burdens of this Society, he is privileged, in the Divine providence, to realize, to a measurable degree, all his desires. ”

“ I have endeavored to show this evening that God is laying bare His arm just now for Africa and the Negro race;—is bringing to a rapid end their long and grievous servitude;—and is showing, in His mysterious providence, that, however grievous, in the past, to flesh and blood, has been their lot, that He meant it for good. ”

“ We have the testimony of West Indian pastors, missionaries, and teachers, to the eager craving of the African peasantry for instruction. In America, the gravest hindrances cannot repress this desire; and among the free black population, I can testify from personal acquaintance and observation that this, the religious solicitude, is the master principle of that people. Turn to Africa, and there we see almost fulfilled the prediction of the Prophet—"The Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising." ”

“ So soon as they are freed from the fetter and from thraldom, a strong spiritual yearning arises in their souls for their father-land, and they stretch forth the arms of a sacred affection for Africa. The feeling is so wide, so general, so earnest, that an organized system is fallen upon; and soon Christian communities of black men in large numbers from your British West Indies, will be seen planted on the west coast of Africa, proffering the boon of salvation to all the large tribes and nations of that continent. ”

“ From every side we hear the earnest call, from yearning hearts, for Christian light. There is no quarter of the globe, where the children of Africa are gathered together, but where we see this trait of character more discovered than any other. Indeed, risking the imputation of partiality of race, I think I may say that religious susceptibility and moral dispositions are the more marked characteristics of the Negro family, and the main point in which they differ from other races. ”

“ When I commenced my remarks I said that it was a cherished idea of many of the supporters of this Society, that their labors might eventually tell upon Africa. Christian friends, this is no longer a mere idea. It is, in very deed, one of the results which God's providence has already wrought, in a partial degree, for Africa, through your West Indian islands. The ways of God are most mysterious— past finding out! lie sees what man's short sight cannot perceive; and takes the direst human workings into his own hands, for enlarged and most beneficent ends. ”

“ I doubt much whether, if ever, the history of missions has discovered such a wide-spread and earnest seeking for Christian knowledge, as is seen among the Pagan tribes on that suffering coast. A missionary on his way down the coast, lands at a certain spot. The news of a God-man, as they term him, having come, flies like lightning through the neighborhood. Three kings visit him; several chiefs bring him their sons, and desire him to take them under his care for instruction; numbers of the people assemble, all expressing their sorrow that he will not abide with them, and teach them. ”

“ The history of the Cushites, in its African section, has been entirely different, Shut in by the great desert from the rest of the world, and, until the discovery of America, protected from foreign aggression by the then, to them, mysterious ocean, they have peopled the vast interior of the African continent with numerous tribes and nations; of most of whom we have but vague, indefinite, and almost fabulous reports, and concerning whom the world is now in nearly as much doubt and incertitude, as it was two thousand years ago, in the time of Herodotus and Ptolemy. ”

“ I need not dwell upon this point, for I have already, in a general way, disclosed the wondrous providences of God upon the race, in every quarter of the globe where they are living. Dark and dreary has been their way through their many avenues of pain, and distress, and agony, during the long centuries of their distressful pilgrimage, and yet they have not been deserted of God. ”

“ Surely their history warrants the affirmation that "the angel of His presence saved them;" and now, when all His purposes of trial and of training, of suffering and of sorrow, are well nigh fulfilled, the Almighty easts down all the barriers of restraint: a light seems of a sudden to shine into their dark prison-house, and a divine voice to say unto them, "Arise up quickly; and their chains fall off from their hands;" ”

“ Nigh thirty centuries of the world's existence had rolled along, and yet an almost palpable gloom had brooded over the multitudinous masses of that thickly crowded continent. During the flight of those dark ages, not a healthful motion was given to the almost deadened life of its crowded population. ”

“ In aiding the Society, you are not only building up your own possession, but you are also becoming co-workers with God in some of His greatest purposes. In contributing to the funds of this association, you touch, with a gracious saving influence, the needy people of two hemispheres. ”

“ The free blacks of America are a disturbing; element in the midst of the white inhabitants of the paradoxical Republic; and hence, by the force of the oppressive principle, thousands of them have been led to emigrate to the coast of Africa. There they have formed a Republic—the Republic of Liberia, with free institutions, with schools and churches, and missions to their heathen kin.
Here, then, in the providence of God, we see three distinct movements, in the Negro race itself, of a civilized and Christian character, tending towards the coast of Africa ”

“ I am aware that it is the part of a wise man not to be too sanguine. I know, too, that, looking at the untold, the unknown millions in Central Africa, upon whom the eyes of civilized man have never fallen, the work is yet but begun. ”

“ There is a peculiar fact which proves this point: where the white man goes he first builds a bank or a trading-house: the first effort of the black man is to erect a meeting-house. The enlightenment of the one seeks, first of all, to express itself in mere civilization: the native disposition of the other tends toward some religious manifestation. ”

“ And then, when landed on the distant strand—the home of servitude, the seat of oppression—then has commenced a system of overwork and physical endurance, incessant and unrequited—a series of painful tasks, of forced labor, of want and deprivation, and lashings, and premature deaths, continued from generation to generation, transmitted as the only inheritance of poor, helpless humanity, to children's children! ”

“ Although the Christian zeal and endeavor of the Church are by no means to be determined by the richness or the hardness of the soil in which the truth is to be planted, still it is cause of great encouragement, and an incentive to higher effort, when we find a people in whose nature there is congruity, so far as that can be in wretched humanity, with the spirit of our Holy Faith, and who desire the possession of it. ”

“ Wherever European civilization has been planted, there generally the natives have vanished, as the morning mist before the rising of the sun. The Indians of North America are fast fading away. The natives of Van Dieman's Land are gone. The many millions that once peopled the clustering islands of the West Indian Archipelago hare vanished before the presence and the power of the white man, and will never again return from the deep repose of the tomb, until they arise at the final day for accusation as well as for judgment. ”

“ The black population have become interested, and have formed societies, and declare their strong spiritual yearnings for Africa. They are to go in communities with clergymen, physicians, mechanics, and laborers, and form themselves at once into organized settlements. An agent has been in this country seeking funds for the foundation of a college. An important society has been formed in England, under the patronage of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the leading dignitaries of the Church, and great statesmen. ”

“ Whilst in these regions many are still thinking of the Negro as an animal who wears a monkey-face, and says 'massa,' with just wit enough to be cunning, and just English enough to lie, there is a race growing up in those Western Islands, seemly in their bearing, and very often handsome, (civilization and improvement fast creolizing their features, and effacing the uncomeliness of the African type ;) their peasants as intelligent and intelligible as our own ”

“ Now the Almighty has placed a very considerable section of this race under your care, control, and government. They inhabit all those islands in the Caribbean Sea, which have come into your possession by discovery, or which have been purchased by the heroic sacrifice of blood, or won by bravciy or prowess. They are the dwellers of some of the most productive portions of the globe, lying in the bright and genial bounds of the tropics. ”

“ The missionary, wherever he goes from his station, is sure to get a large, patient, inquiring auditory, whether in a hut, or in a rude heathen temple, or in the temporary Christian Church, or beneath the shade of the palm, upon the passing highway. Sometimes the chief of a tribe refuses an escort through to a neighboring town, lest the missionary should stay with the other people and not come back and proclaim the good news to him and his people. ”

“ In the United States of America, although wicked laws and a bad public sentiment have seriously retarded the spiritual progress of the African race, yet in the slave States a greater attention is now paid to this duty than ever before; and in the Xorth a class of free black men has arisen, who, as ministers and teachers, in their own persons vindicate their race, and at the same time elevate and bless it. ”

“ The locality they have chosen is that rich and precious portion of the coast which lies south of Liberia, and which is contiguous to the powerful kingdoms of Ashantee and Dahomey; and thus, in a corporate state, they will be enabled, at an early day, to act with a civilizing power and a Christian influence upon all the wide spaces, yea, at the very heart of the great life which beats in that vast continent. ”

“ Dowding, who has lived many years in the West Indies, thus speaks of the black population in general: "They are now in the fullest career of improvement, and after knowledge of them, as parishioners, both young and old, in the school, in the family, and at the sick bedside, it is impossible not to call them a most promising people ”

“ But if you have not adopted this opinion, and if you do value your colonial possessions, then you must see the need that these people—the Negro peasantry—should be trained to be honest, moral, industrious, intelligent, and thrifty. But in order that they may become fixed in moral and industrious habits, they must receive a moral and religious training. ”

“ Sometimes their parents come from the far interior with their children—so great is their desire; and so numerous are the recmests of this kind, that, not unfrequently, the missionaries are obliged to decline receiving them. In several cases they have sacrificed their parental feelings—parted with their little ones, and sent them across the ocean for instruction. In England, at the present time, there cannot be less than a hundred Negro children at school, in different parts of the country. ”

“ To hundreds of thousands of the nations, on the coast and in the interior, the Gospel of glad tidings is regularly preached. Its life-giving power is manifested in the marked revolution which is going on in their tastes and habits, and in the change of their customs. Chri-tian communities are being gathered together; civilized and Christian institutions are formed, and are extending themselves. ”

“ Thousands of children are now regularly receiving instruction in our holy religion, and the enlightenment which comes from mental training. [9] Already one high-school has furnished a score and more of catechists and teachers; has produced three native young men, fit candidates for holy orders in the Church, who are preaching the Gospel to their own kith and kin in heathen darkness. ”